The present invention is a fire protection device which involves placing a fire resistant sheet material over a building to prevent the building from burning down in a surrounding fire. The present invention does not relate so much to the type of sheet material used or the fact that a building is being covered with a fire resistant sheet material, but relates more specifically to how to compact and deploy the sheet material efficiently and quickly before the building catches on fire.
There is nothing more important with these types of fire protection devices than being able to quickly deploy them before a fire starts on the building to be protected. Often there is little warning of an approaching fire, especially in urban areas where the threatening fire starts in the next door neighbor's house at night. Also, will fires overtake rural buildings with amazing speed. Without the ability to quickly and completely deploy the fire protective sheet material, the building will succumb to fire before the sheet material can be deployed.
The prior art devices have been unusually complicated in the mechanisms they have chosen or they offer no mechanism at all. In addition, the mechanisms require too much time to deploy, and due to the mechanisms complexity, the deployment is unreliable. Since complete deployment and encompassing of the building is necessary to enable the sheet material to prevent the building from succumbing to the surrounding fire, the slightest mechanical failure will cause the building to burn. The prior devices which offer no mechanism for deployment require entirely too much time to deploy and sometimes are impossible to deploy due to the high velocity winds which are created by an oncoming fire.
References known which relate to prior art fire protection devices similar to the present invention are as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,877,525 to Husson et al. PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,969,216 to Isobe. PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,715,843 to Ballinger. PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 905,002 to Rosenberg.
The present invention has solved the problems of the prior art devices by creating a simple and reliable deployment mechanism and by reducing the time for complete deployment by folding the sheet material before it is compacted so that one sheet material will cover two or more adjacent walls of the building.